A benchmark international standard in Information Technology Management processes implemented at the Commercial Bank of Ceylon has enabled it to achieve yet another first in the local banking sector.

The IT Research & Development Department of Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC was recently certified as achieving CMMi Level 3 maturity in relation to software processes practiced at the department. The CMMi certification is based on a benchmark standard developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA.

Announcing this milestone achievement, Commercial Bank’s Chief Information Officer Rohan Muttiah said: "IT management has become mission-critical to banking and leading banks strive to adopt best practices that ensure their IT management, innovation and R&D follow structured and well-defined processes that are aligned to performance goals. CMMi certification is an important stage in this process."

He said the CMMi certification, which is similar to ISO 9001: 2000 certification, helps with alignment to COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and related Technology) a set of best practices for IT management created by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) and the IT Governance Institute (ITGI).

"The significance of CMMi certification to our customers and other stakeholders is that it ensures that IT management and development at Commercial Bank follow a precise process of defining requirements, validating these requirements, designing, building and testing software solutions that meet requirements and implementing these solutions with minimal disruption of operations and systems," Muttiah said.

The review of Commercial Bank’s existing IT management processes and provision of guidance for achieving CMMi compliance was undertaken by Messrs KPMG Ford, Rhodes, Thornton and Co., the local representative member firm of a global professional services organization. The CMMi compliance certification covers Commercial Bank’s software development processes for Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.